*

this week i have revolved almost entirely around perseids, the backs of my eyes have been a permanent night sky. every night stumbling across the dewdrop fields, dizzy from looking upwards and singing songs to make them come to us. last night it was just ursa minor and i in the house so we filled bowls to the brim with neopolitan ice cream, i wore my new skirt that looks like the starry sky and we sat patiently until the clouds melted away. my sweet boy's face looking up to the celestial, open mouthed. i'd miss all the meteor showers in the world to keep him this way forever.




only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, thou shalt not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.

from where you are, you can hear their dreams.